Week 7A

In Class

At the beginning of class we reviewed what we liked and disliked about the Interdisciplinary Interaction Design Conference this past weekend. You can see my comments in Week 6 - On Campus Event. We also reviewed how our user testing went and if we still need more interviews. As of now, I have 2 solid interviews and 1 okay interview due to technology difficulties. I still need to complete 3 more interviews. I intend to complete these interviews on either Friday or Monday morning. 

During class we went over the rough outline for our written documentation for the project. 

1. Intro/Project/Problem (shorter) Less than 200 words
2. Set-up/Context (shorter) - Location, screen set up and track pad. 
3. Write a summary based on the content (from the questions) - few paragraphs, parent/student reactions
4. What you learned (use terms from the book)
5. What changes/suggestions do you have for the admissions department web page.

* Think about what you read and how that can help you with the write-up for example using the website, books, sheets and creating connections in readings/research. 

This project can either be a written document or a final report that is designed and handed in on the 21st of October. I think I will be writing up a draft in word but completing the final project as a final designed case study. In the case study, I will be using my video screen recordings to prompt me into eye tracking movements to show how long and what the user looked at during each question.

We continued to work on our written documents in class.

Homework

Reading

Website Usability Testing: "We are not our Users"

http://www.howdesign.com/resources-education/website-usability-testing-we-are-not-our-users/

By: Laura Yoo

This article is an overview of an interview with Chris Butler on why usability testing is important to a website's success. A few of the questions as was "Why is usability testing so important to making a site sucessful?", "How can the data you receive really inform the design decisions you make?", and "Can you provide an example of how usability testing for a project really contributed to a course direction, or shift in thinking, that ended up improving the overall experience a user would have with the site?". Overall the answers reflected on that we are not our own users and the point of testing is to get other opinions since the designers are not the users of the website. Once testing is complete they can design around the call to action and make clear to the users what they are specifically looking at. Design decisions can be made based on first impressions of the web page, this type of testing is called Ten-second testing where they look at a webpage they have never seen and pick out what stands out most to them in the 10 seconds. Based on what they saw can decide the decision making around their observations.